Parksville Royals lose all four on Kelowna trip

The Quality Foods Parksville Royals returned home from their trip to Kelowna without any wins to show after a rough outing against the Okangan Athletics.

Playing two games on Saturday and two games on Sunday, the Royals were in tough against the fourth place Athletics. Owen Kelly got the start for the first of the four games and pitched a solid game, going six innings and only giving up three runs on three hits. It wasn’t meant to be for the Royals in this one though as they lost 3–2.

In game two things got ugly in a hurry. Justin Dieleman had the lone hit for the Royals as they were lit up for 15 runs, losing game two by a score of 15–1. Colton Tuka was tagged in the loss in this game, going three innings with six runs, two of them earned. The Royals also had four errors as a team, leading to more runs for the A’s.

“It wasn’t pretty, that’s for sure. Saturday we got off to a decent start with Owen starting on the mound in game one but that was about it,” assistant coach Bruce Biro said. “Our pitching wasn’t there, our hitting wasn’t there, and we weren’t ready for game two at all. We gave up some runs early and that was all she wrote.”

Sunday was much the same for the Royals. With the score 2–1 for the A’s in the fourth inning, Adam McKillican was cruising on the mound and keeping the Royals in it. Errington’s Liam Ballance went 2–4 in the game and Nanoose Bay’s Josh Anderson went 2–3. It was 2–1 until the bottom of the sixth inning, where the A’s got to reliever Zack Senay for six runs, adding one more off Ethan Fox for a total of seven in the inning and nine for the game. The Royals added one more but dropped this one 9–3.

Game two on Sunday was another to forget for the Royals, as they dropped a 14–1 game, giving the A’s a sweep of their weekend. Parksville’s Andrew Evernden was the lone bright spot in this one, going 2–3 at the plate.

“We were a little better defensively on Sunday than we were on Saturday,” Biro said.

“Obviously, the score wasn’t apparent of that but we were able to cut down on the errors a little bit. Sometimes you are the ones that get the big outbursts at the plate and other times you’re on the receiving end of a beating, and we were on that side of things too many times last weekend.”

The Royals were back at practice before a Wednesday night tilt in Nanaimo against the Pirates at Serauxmen Stadium.

The Royals will try and turn their fortunes around before playing host to the first place Langley Blaze Sunday, at 11 a.m. at Inouye–Wallace Field.